


After the Worst (Is When It All Gets Real)

by flipflop_diva



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Apocalypse, Post-Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-22
Updated: 2015-06-22
Packaged: 2018-04-05 17:10:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,104
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4188045
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flipflop_diva/pseuds/flipflop_diva
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They survived the first Chitauri invasion. This time they might not be so lucky. At least for Bruce and Natasha, they still have each other.</p>
            </blockquote>





	After the Worst (Is When It All Gets Real)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [galfridian](https://archiveofourown.org/users/galfridian/gifts).



It was her last stand. She held her electric wands in her hands and glared defiantly at the _thing_ in front.

She didn’t care that there were far too many of them for her to escape. She didn’t care that they outnumbered her more than one hundred to one. She didn’t care that she still, after all this time, had no idea how to take them down.

What she did care about was that they had killed her friends. What she did care about is that they had turned half of the earth’s population into mindless zombies. What she did care about was that even if they killed her — which she knew they were going to do, and she was very much okay with that — she was going to make sure she took as many of them out with her as she could.

The one in front’s eyes looked her over like she was nothing more than a gnat to him. It was all the indifference she needed.

She leapt, heading straight for its head, wrapping her still-powerful legs around its neck before it could even move. She plunged her electric wand into the side of its head, felt its body stagger beneath her, but before it could fall, she was leaping on to the creature beside it.

She could feel them all moving closer, the entire group of them, but she didn’t stop. She clenched her jaw, narrowed her eyes and concentrated on jumping, and on plunging, letting alien bodies fall around her as fast as possible.

She was airborne, halfway between one dead one and one still living, when the hand locked around her neck, tight and strong. She flailed, kicking and fighting, but it was too big, too strong.

For a hazy moment, she wondered how these aliens, who were bigger than her but not by much, could actually wrap an entire hand around her neck. But before she could summon an answer, everything went black.

•••

She blinked awake to the feel of something hard underneath her and a feeling of fire in her throat. 

Before she could even move, a hand — a human hand — was shoving a water bottle under her nose.

“It’s not much. But drink.”

She recognized that voice. She blinked again, waiting for the world to shift into focus.

_Bruce._

She stared at him, her mind not believing what her eyes were seeing. “How …?” she finally managed. “But you were dead ... I saw …”

Bruce smiled ruefully. “I wasn’t. I think _the other guy_ … he saved me.”

“But everyone else ….”

“Didn’t make it.”

She closed her eyes against the painful lump that welled up in her throat. They had been a team until the very end. They had survived the first Chitauri invasion, but this time … this time there were too many, coming too fast, too skilled … anyone who got in the aliens’ way ended up dead or mind-controlled.

The Avengers had fought, though, just like they always had, side-by-side, no one even thinking of running. But the Chitauri had been prepared for them too …

A tear dripped down Natasha’s cheek. She wiped it away quickly. She couldn’t afford to give in to her emotions. Not when there was a chance ….

A chance for what? Not to end this, but to survive? She wasn’t really sure she wanted to. But a chance to still fight perhaps.

Bruce was still holding the measly bottle of water out to her. She took it and put the bottle to her lips, letting a few drops cool her aching throat. Her fingers fluttered up to touch her aching flesh.

Bruce must have noticed the way she winced.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “The Other Guy grabbed you. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

She frowned. The hand grabbing her out of the air …

“That was you?”

She must have sounded angry, because he looked instantly wounded. “They were going to kill you.”

“Maybe I wanted them to.”

“Don’t say that.”

“Why? Because I should want to live in this horrible world? I should want to be the only one left of everyone we know?”

“You’re not the _only_ one left.”

The anger left as suddenly as it came. She sagged against the realization that it was her and him. Of everyone, it was them.

She chuckled mirthlessly. “It would figure, right?” she said. “The two monsters.”

Bruce reached out, took her hand, squeezed it gently. “Maybe it’s our time for redemption.”

•••

She was shivering. The fires in the far distance cast heat into the air, but even as sweat dripped down her face, she still tugged the blankets tighter around her, trembling against the cold. 

She had never felt so helpless, so defeated in her entire life. Not even as a child in the Red Room, before she knew what her handlers had wanted from her, before she understood who they had wanted her to become. Not even when SHIELD had fallen and she had lost the only anchor she’d had left in the world.

They still fought, every day, she and Bruce, taking out one alien here, one over there, but it didn’t matter. The end was inevitable. Too much of the world’s population was now under the Chitauri’s control. Too many people hadn’t made it at all. Killing one of theirs meant nothing. It was like stomping on one ant out of the thousands that come scurrying out. It barely made a difference and it didn’t even begin to make them feel better.

“Natasha.” Bruce’s voice was a whisper in the night air. “Stop thinking so hard. Just lie down.”

She turned her head to look at him, lying there beside her, still looking so calm, so relaxed. She didn’t understand that, _couldn’t_ understand that. It wasn’t her. Though sometimes she wished it was. 

He reached out, put his hand on her wrist and tugged softly, and she let him draw her down next to him, let him pull her into his embrace.

They had tried it once, the two of them, but it had been a disaster. But now …

She rolled over and tucked her head into his chest, felt the tight grasp of his arms as they fit around her. 

“We can’t give up,” he whispered into her hair. “That’s not who we are.”

She knew that. She did. But sometimes, like now, she needed to hear it. She looked up, pressed her lips gently to Bruce’s and shivered again the cold that only she felt.

At least she wasn’t alone. At least he understood.

At the moment, that was the most, and the least, she could ask for.


End file.
